Report Updates Portrait Of LEP Students

A new federal report documents what some experts on
limited-English-proficient students have suspected: Such students are
underrepresented in special education.

Historically, some school districts mistook some students' lack of
English skills for a disability and wrongly assigned them to special
education classes. Now, experts contend, some districts have become too
reluctant to assign English-language learners to special education.
Districts may fear being unfair, or may have policies that delay the
testing of such students for possible disabilities.

"The pendulum has swung the other way," said Delia Pompa, the
executive director of the Washington-based National Association for
Bilingual Education. "There's almost a fear in school districts of not
identifying them appropriately, so then they don't do anything for
them."

The report, "Descriptive Study of Services to LEP Students and LEP
Students With Disabilities," was written by Development Associates
Inc., of Arlington, Va., and commissioned by the U.S. Department of
Education's office of English- language acquisition.

A summary of the study's findings was released on the Web site of
the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. The full
484-page report, which was sent to Education Week, is expected
to be posted on the same site this month.

Martha L. Thurlow, the director of the National Center on
Educational Outcomes, which is located at the University of Minnesota
and provided consultants to the research project, said that the study
is the first to provide information about English-language learners
with disabilities based on a nationally representative sample of
schools. The study's sample included 1,315 districts and 3,424 schools
that each serve at least one English- language learner.

It's important that the nation now has a research-based estimate on
how many English-language learners with disabilities have been
identified in schools, according to Ms. Thurlow. The study puts the
number at 357,325.

Also, she said, the study provides groundbreaking information in
showing that while 13.5 percent of all students receive special
education, only 9.2 percent of English-language learners do.

Data that her center collected in its own research on
English-language learners with disabilities from a smattering of states
had previously showed low number of such students in special education.
"It is good to have actual data," Ms. Thurlow said.

Lack of Training

Leonard M. Baca, a professor of bilingual special education at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, said that the study drove home for
him the nation's need for teachers who are trained to meet both
language and special education needs.

"This is an issue that is going to continue to face the school
system. We're unprepared," Mr. Baca said. A professor in one of the
nation's few master's programs in bilingual special education, Mr. Baca
noted that only Illinois provides a state endorsement for teachers in
both bilingual and special education.

The study found that six out of 10 special education teachers who
teach at least three students with limited English proficiency had
received training related to English-language learners in the past five
years.

Mr. Baca observed that the number of English-language learners with
disabilities has increased along with the number of English-language
learners.

The federal study showed that from 1992 to 2002, the number of
students studying English as a new language in U.S. schools increased
by 72 percent, while the number of teachers who had at least one such
student more than tripled. Nearly 43 percent of all teachers in public
schools now teach at least one student with limited proficiency in
English, while only 15 percent did in 1992, according to the study.

The study also shows that English-language learners are more likely
to receive instruction completely in English than they were a decade
ago. In 2002, 59 percent of the nation's 4 million English-language
learners received all of their instruction in English, while in 1992,
only 37 percent of such students did so.

The shift was caused only in part by the passage of state ballot
measures in California and Arizona that curtailed bilingual education,
according to Russell W. Rumberger, the director of the Linguistic
Minority Research Institute at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

He said that the focus in the federal No Child Left Behind Act on
research-based reading programs, which are usually English-based, and
states' emphasis on preparing students for standardized tests in
English have contributed to the change in instruction for
English-language learners.

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